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Memoirs of the Addams Administration 31.

After the latest (but perhaps not last) attempt to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (ACA), some Republicans have fallen back. Lamar Alexander suggested that a bipartisan effort to “stabilize and strengthen” the ACA.[1] Will President Trump accommodate himself to this inconvenient truth? The president could scuttle the ACA’s healthcare market places by refusing to authorize the payment of the subsidies that enable “Cost Sharing Reductions” in premiums. Under the Obama administration a federal judge held that payment of the subsidies without a Congressional appropriation is illegal. The case awaits final resolution in the Supreme Court, but the Trump administration has continued to make the payments in the meantime. Halting the payments would lead to an estimated 19 percent jump in premiums nation-wide. Does Donald Trump want to shove millions of Americans off medical insurance?

Six months into his administration, President Trump has begun to encounter resistance from fellow Republicans.[2] They are eager to embrace a strong line against Russia, they can’t do anything to bring a resolution to the “collusion” story, and they’re angry about his verbal assault on Attorney General Jeff Sessions (so recently one of their own). If Republicans break from the president, he will have little choice but to abandon a legislative agenda in far of issuing a blizzard of executive orders and vetoing Republican legislation out of spite. Those will be contested in the courts. On the other hand, if Republicans break from the president, they will have little chance of advancing their own legislative agenda unless they can unite with Democrats to over-ride a presidential veto. Of course, cooler heads may prevail.

Playing to his base, the president announced that transgender troops would be barred from further service in the military, and the Justice Department launched an investigation of affirmative action admissions policies by universities.[3] There may be legitimate reasons for limiting transgender troops in the military. It isn’t clear that the president knows any of them. Rather, he seems to have been over-responding to pressure from Christian conservative Republicans. In any event, the Pentagon said that a tweet is not the same thing as a formal order, that there is a formal review of transgender service people under way; and that all troops will continue to be treated with respect. In terms of affirmative action, there is a sense in some quarters that it has been turned into a system of “set asides” for African-Americans and, to some extent, for Hispanic-Americans. Given the over-supply of colleges, it doesn’t have much effect.

Under these adverse conditions, a steadier hand in the White House became vital. President Trump’s churning of his White House staff reached a new stage.[4] Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Press Secretary Sean Spicer left, while Anthony Scaramucci became director of communications. Then Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly took over as chief of staff. Next thing you know, Scaramucci got booted out of the White House. Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general often portrayed in the media as a Drill Instructor screaming orders up the noses of staffers, tried to impose some order. (No such option appears available to the Congressional Republicans.) One key task for Kelly will be dealing with leaks from the sieve-like White House. It will fall to the Justice Department to stanch the leaks from the Trump Resistance within the federal bureaucracy. Editorials and columnists generally agreed that a far more challenging task lay in the need to wrangle an undisciplined president.